In an interview with CNN after his testimony, Wylie said that Bannon, who held a position on the firm's board before joining the Trump campaign, directed the firm to research suppressing the vote among black Americans.

Other liberal demographic groups were also targeted, Wylie said.

"Mr. Bannon sees cultural warfare as the means to create enduring change in American politics. It was for this reason Mr. Bannon engaged SCL (Cambridge Analytica's parent company), a foreign military contractor, to build an arsenal of informational weapons he could deploy on the American population," Wylie said Wednesday.

That information is then used to "discourage or demobilize certain types of people from voting," he added, including African-Americans, which Wylie says were particular targets of the operations.

During the hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Wylie was asked by Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) whether Bannon's goal "was to suppress voting or discourage certain individuals in the U.S. from voting."

Jared Kushner became “agitated” and “infuriate[d]” at the infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting when a Kremlin-connected lawyer droned on about U.S. sanctions, instead of delivering on a promise to provide damaging information on Hillary Clinton. That’s according to Rob Goldstone, a British music promoter and friend of the Trumps who helped set up the meeting between Natalia Veselnitskaya and Donald Trump Jr.—and who testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the Trump Tower confab.

Goldstone’s testimony stands in contrast to what Kushner said in public about the meeting. In a July 2017 statement, Kushner paints himself as bored and confused by Veselnitskaya’s presentation. ...

But Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee concluded in their final report on Russian interference in the 2016 election that Kushner, along with Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort, "had expected to receive—but did not ultimately obtain—derogatory information on candidate Clinton" during the meeting.

Goldstone, for his part, testified that Kushner became visibly angry when Veselnitskaya delivered a lengthy diatribe about U.S. sanctions on Russia and their impact on adoptions—instead of handing over dirt on Clinton.

“After a few minutes of this labored presentation, Jared Kushner, who is sitting next to me, appeared somewhat agitated by this and said, I really have no idea what you're talking about. Could you please focus a bit more and maybe just start again?” Goldstone recalled of the meeting according to hearing transcripts released by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. “And I recall that she began the presentation exactly where she had begun it last time, almost word for word, which seemed, by his body language, to infuriate him even more.”

"The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press." - Ida B. Wells-Barnett, journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, feminist and founder with others of NAACP.

"The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press." - Ida B. Wells-Barnett, journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, feminist and founder with others of NAACP.

BuzzFeed News: The Definitive Story Of How Trump’s Team Worked The Trump Moscow Deal During The Campaign ...

Last month, Senate Intelligence Committee staffers peppered Sater for hours with questions about the Trump Moscow project. Sater testified that Cohen acted as the “intermediary” for Trump Moscow and was eager to see the deal through because he wanted to “score points with Trump.”

Sater also testified that Trump would regularly receive “short updates about the process of the deal.” Cohen has said that he briefed Trump three times on the deal, all before the end of January 2016. Cohen, the White House, and the Trump Organization did not return messages seeking comment.

Blackwater founder Erik Prince appears to have a problem. The New York Times reported Saturday that Prince, the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, arranged and attended an August 3, 2016 Trump Tower meeting where George Nader, an adviser to the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates, told Donald Trump Jr. that UAE and Saudi Arabia were eager to help his father win the election.

Prince told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, under oath, that he had no formal communication or contact with the Trump campaign.

That doesn’t reflect well on Prince, because on November 30, 2017, he told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, under oath, that he had no formal communication or contact with the Trump campaign, other than occasionally sending “papers” on foreign policy matters to Steve Bannon, who became head of the Trump campaign in August.

“So there was no formal communication or contact with the campaign?” Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) asked Prince during his interview by the Intelligence Committee.

“Correct,” Prince responded. ...

Prince, unlike most witnesses who appeared before the House Intelligence Committee, agreed to allow the panel to release his entire testimony. As a result, Mueller’s team can use the transcript as evidence to potentially charge Prince for lying to Congress. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the panel, told Mother Jones in March that Democrats are also considering sending Mueller criminal referrals urging him to prosecute witnesses who lied to the committee.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said on Sunday that there are credible parts of a recent report saying foreign governments, besides Russia, offered to help President Trump's campaign in 2016.

Warner said on CBS's "Face the Nation" that The New York Times report contained "credible components" detailing attempts from governments, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, offering to help the Trump campaign.

The senator, who serves as the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, went on to say the committee would look into the report.

Warner's comments come after the Times reported that the president's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., met with an emissary from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, George Nader, who said the countries wanted Trump to win the election.

The Times also reports that Trump Jr. took a meeting with Israeli social media specialist Joel Zamel.

A Democratic senator is calling for an investigation into whether Donald Trump Jr. lied when he told the Senate Judiciary Committee that aside from Russia, he knew of no other foreign government or foreign nationals who offered to assist the Trump campaign in 2016. In a letter sent Thursday to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa)—the committee chairman—Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) called for an open hearing in which Trump Jr. could be asked to explain his past statements.

Last weekend, the New York Times reported that in August 2016, Trump Jr. and Trump aide Stephen Miller met in Trump Tower with an Israeli social media expert named Joel Zamel; Erik Prince, a prominent Republican security contractor; and George Nader, an emissary for two princes from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The Times reported that the meeting was “convened primarily to offer help to the Trump team” and that it helped forge “relationships between the men and Trump insiders that would develop over the coming months—past the election and well into President Trump’s first year in office, according to several people with knowledge of their encounters.” It’s illegal for foreigners to assist US electoral campaigns.

Trump Jr.’s lawyer, Alan Futerfas, told the Times that Trump Jr. “recalls a meeting” in which Nader, Prince, and another individual “who may be” Zamel pitched “a social media platform or marketing strategy. [Trump Jr.] was not interested and that was the end of it.”

But in his letter to Grassley, Coons noted that Trump Jr. appears to have told a very different story during his September 7, 2017, closed-door appearance before the committee. On that occasion, Trump Jr. discussed another infamous Trump Tower meeting, in which he sought information damaging to Hillary Clinton from an emissary of the Russian government. But as Coons pointed out, Trump Jr. also told the committee that he had no knowledge of any offers of assistance from non-Russian foreign governments or non-Russian foreign nationals.

Grassley pushes back on Dem accusations that Trump Jr. lied to Senate panel

(CNN)Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley on Tuesday pushed back against a Democrat who has accused Donald Trump Jr. of potentially lying in his testimony to the committee, and suggested a different witness may have lied to the panel instead.

Grassley, an Iowa Republican, sent a letter to Sen. Chris Coons on Tuesday responding to the Delaware Democrat's letter last week, which charged that President Donald Trump's eldest son may have "provided false testimony" to the committee and urged Grassley to bring Trump Jr. back to the committee to testify publicly.

Coons suggested Trump lied in his September 2017 testimony when he told the committee that foreigners did not "offer or provide assistance" to the Trump campaign and he did not seek any foreign assistance. He pointed to a recent New York Times report that revealed Trump Jr. met in the months before the 2016 election with George Nader, an emissary for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and an Israeli social media specialist offering help to the Trump campaign. ...

Grassley also raised the prospect that Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson may have lied in his testimony to the committee, comparing Simpson's statements to Trump Jr.'s and asking Coons what action he wanted to take with regard to Simpson's testimony.

Stone’s lawyer, Grant Smith, told The Daily Beast that the committee last week sent them an email with a list of search terms for communications to use to determine which electronic communications to turn over to the Senate Intelligence Committee. At the same time, according to Smith, the committee said its members would like to question Stone after receiving the documents. Smith said the process has been amicable and that the interview date has not yet been set.

Stone told The Daily Beast he hopes the interview with the committee will be public, and said he has “already begun to think about what to wear.”

Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Stone, in emails written to an associate of WikiLeaks founder-slash-embassy crasher Julian Assange, had solicited “damaging” information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in the late stages of the 2016 presidential campaign. That appears to be inconsistent with his September testimony before the House intelligence committee, when he said he “merely wanted confirmation” of Assange having dirt on Trump’s political opponent.

Stone has become a central focus for investigators looking into potential coordination between President Donald Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin. On May 20 on NBC’s Meet the Press, he said he is ready for Special Counsel Bob Mueller to indict him.

Earl Russell Browder (May 20, 1891 – June 27, 1973) was an American political activist and leader of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Browder is best remembered as the General Secretary of the CPUSA during the 1930s and first half of the 1940s.

During World War I, Browder served time in federal prison as a conscientious objector to conscription and the war. Upon his release, Browder became an active member of the American Communist movement, soon working as an organizer on behalf of the Communist International and its Red International of Labor Unions in China and the Pacific region.

In 1930, following the removal of a rival political faction from leadership, Browder was made General Secretary of the CPUSA. For the next 15 years thereafter Browder was the most recognizable public figure associated with American Communism, authoring dozens of pamphlets and books, making numerous public speeches before sometimes vast audiences, and twice running for President of the United States. Browder also took part in clandestine activities on behalf of Soviet intelligence in America during his period of party leadership, placing those who sought to convey sensitive information to the party into contact with Soviet intelligence.

Why the Bombshell Trump Letter Could Be a Big Problem for Donald Trump Jr.

It undercuts the veracity of Trump Jr.’s testimony to Congress.

On Saturday afternoon, the New York Times revealed a 20-page private letter that President Donald Trump’s lawyers had sent special counsel Robert Mueller in January in which they contended that it was impossible for Trump to commit obstruction of justice because he, as president, has authority over all federal investigations and the power to do whatever he wants with them. The letter is a brazen declaration of executive power, and legal experts immediately challenged its premises and assertions. The missive also raised a possible problem for Donald Trump Jr.: it suggested he had not told Congress the whole truth—and might have even misled the body—regarding the cover story he put out when it was revealed that during the campaign he, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort had met with a Russian emissary after being told she would share with them dirt on Hillary Clinton, as part of a Kremlin operation to help Trump.

At issue is the statement that Trump Jr. released, when news broke last July of that June 9, 2016, meeting in Trump Tower between the senior Trump advisers and Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer supposedly dispatched by a Kremlin official. Trump Jr.’s first statement claimed the meeting had been about Russian adoption policy. (American adoptions of Russian children had been curtailed by Moscow in response to the implementation of the Magnitsky Act, which imposed sanctions on Russian officials suspected of human rights abuses.) That statement did not mention that the meeting had been set up by the Trump campaign in the expectation it would receive from Moscow negative information on Clinton. And Mueller’s investigation has been looking at the elder Trump’s involvement in concocting that cover story. Earlier this year, the Times reported that Trump had supervised the writing of the statement and had insisted that it claim that the meeting only was about Russian adoptions.

The letter from Trump’s lawyers goes further than the Times’s account—and confirms an earlier Washington Post report pegging Trump as the author of the statement. It states, “the President dictated a short but accurate response to the New York Times article on behalf of his son, Donald Trump, Jr.” Dictated—that means Trump devised that misleading statement. This is the first time Trump and his lawyers have conceded that he is responsible for the statement. The Times notes that previously “Trump’s advisers have tried to muddy this point, suggesting several people were involved, so the clarity of the sentence is striking.”

The sentence is also striking in that it undercuts the veracity of Trump Jr.’s testimony to Congress.

Grassley also raised the prospect that Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson may have lied in his testimony to the committee, comparing Simpson's statements to Trump Jr.'s and asking Coons what action he wanted to take with regard to Simpson's testimony.

Now that we have an admission from Trump's lawyers that undercuts jr's testimony, I guess the ball is back in Coons' court?

Top Democrat on House Intel Committee seeks release of all Russia probe interviews

WASHINGTON — The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee is raising public pressure on Republicans to release transcripts of all the panel's interviews related to the Russia investigation, saying they could be of value to the ongoing Mueller probe.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., wrote to Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., two weeks ago requesting that the dozens of transcripts be released to the public, saying they could shed "additional light on the issues of collusion and obstruction of justice." He said Thursday he had not received any reply to his request. Nunes' office declined to comment.

In his letter, Schiff also raised concerns that some witnesses “may have testified untruthfully” before the committee, and that special counsel Robert Mueller and his team “should consider whether perjury charges are warranted.”

"Certainly the testimony of Don Jr., Erik Prince, Roger Stone and others is inconsistent with the public reports of meetings conversations and other facts that have now been established. And so if those public reports are accurate than clearly they were not telling the truth," Schiff said in an interview with NBC News.

Senate Investigators May Have Found a Missing Piece in the Russia Probe

An ex-congressman has attracted scrutiny from the Senate Judiciary Committee, as it continues to investigate whether President Donald Trump’s campaign conspired with Moscow to sway the 2016 presidential election.

Curt Weldon, a Republican and former Pennsylvania congressman, lost his re-election campaign more than a decade ago following an FBI probe into his ties to two Russian companies. He has “connections to both Russia and the Trump campaign” that are raising suspicions among senators, a spokeswoman for Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein said. Feinstein is the committee’s ranking member, and wants to interview Weldon, the spokeswoman said.

The reasons for the committee’s interest in Weldon are murky, but his ties to Russia are significant. Members of Congress believe, for example, that Weldon may lead to answers about why the Trump administration sought to lift sanctions on Russia in the aftermath of the 2016 election despite a public statement by intelligence agencies that the Kremlin tried to help Trump win. Weldon may also have information about the role a Russian oligarch may have played in trying to influence the Trump administration—though Weldon denied this when I asked him about it.

Additionally, Weldon appears to have knowledge of a key instance in which a foreign national sought to influence the president through one of his closest advisers—a central theme of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into Russia’s election interference.

Several prominent Russians, some in President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle or high in the Russian Orthodox Church, now have been identified as having contact with National Rifle Association officials during the 2016 U.S. election campaign, according to photographs and an NRA source.

Other influential Russians who met with NRA representatives during the campaign include Dmitry Rogozin, who until last month served as a deputy prime minister overseeing Russia’s defense industry, and Sergei Rudov, head of one of Russia’s largest philanthropies, the St. Basil the Great Charitable Foundation. The foundation was launched by an ultra-nationalist ally of Russian President Putin.

The Russians talked and dined with NRA representatives, mainly in Moscow, as U.S. presidential candidates vied for the White House. Now U.S. investigators want to know if relationships between the Russian leaders and the nation’s largest gun rights group went beyond vodka toasts and gun factory tours, evolving into another facet of the Kremlin’s broad election-interference operation.

In March, Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of California noted in a letter to NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre that an NRA delegation met with Rogozin and Rudov during a trip to Russia in December 2015.

Even as the contacts took place, Kremlin cyber operatives were secretly hacking top Democrats’ emails and barraging Americans’ social media accounts with fake news stories aimed at damaging the image of Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton and boosting the prospects of Republican Donald Trump.

Multiple Democrats on the committee leading the congressional investigations into Russian election interference say they want to interview Ivanka Trump as part of the probe.

Calls for the Senate Intelligence Committee to interview Ivanka Trump, who has largely avoided scrutiny as part of the congressional and FBI investigations into Russian meddling in the last presidential election, follow an exclusive report from BuzzFeed News that found that in the midst of the presidential campaign, she was in contact with a Russian weightlifter who offered to connect her father to Russian President Vladimir Putin in order to facilitate building a Trump tower in Moscow.

Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat on the panel, said he would like staff on the committee to interview Ivanka Trump about “two separate national security questions.” First, Wyden said investigators should ask about BuzzFeed News’ reporting that Ivanka Trump connected the weightlifter, Dmitry Klokov, with her father’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen, who was working on the Trump tower project, “and what her role might have been in that.”

The second issue, he said, is China’s recent decision to grant Ivanka Trump trademarks around the same time her father promised to help Chinese telecommunications equipment manufacturer ZTE, despite the US government having fined the company just last year for breaking sanctions and citing it as a threat to national security.

“I would like to have the staff look at both of those issues,” Wyden said.

Ryan met this morning with three top Republicans - Trey Gowdy, Devin Nunes and Bob Goodlatte - about their demands for Justice Department documents about the Clinton and Russia probes amid their threats to hold Rod Rosenstein in contempt.

Key Democrat: Trump advisers 'lied through their teeth' when testifying about Russia contacts

WASHINGTON — A top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee says he believes longtime Donald Trump adviser Roger Stone and an associate “lied through their teeth” when they testified before his panel and they both should be investigated for perjury.

Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., made the comments about Stone and another one-time Trump adviser, Michael Caputo, during an interview for the Yahoo News podcast “Skullduggery.”

Swalwell focused on recent revelations that, at Caputo’s instigation, Stone met during the 2016 campaign in Florida with a Russian immigrant and sometime FBI informant named Henry Greenberg who offered “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.

Neither Stone nor Caputo mentioned the meeting when they testified last year before the House Intelligence Committee about their contacts with Russians — a failure that both men have attributed to the fact that they had forgotten about it. ...

Swalwell added that he and other committee Democrats, led by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the ranking member on the panel, have pushed to have transcripts of closed door testimony of Stone and Caputo sent to special counsel Robert Mueller, but they have been blocked from doing so by the committee chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif. ...

“The Nunes team has refused to cooperate with us on that and at least send [the transcripts] over to Mueller,” he added. “And so yes, I do believe that both Caputo and Stone, that special counsel should be able to look at that for perjury.”

The Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday backed the intelligence community's assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to aid President Donald Trump and is continuing its efforts to undermine U.S. democracy.

The finding that reveal Russia meddled in far more extensive ways than previously known is yet another strong rebuke to Trump and many of his allies who continue to cast doubt on the finding from the intelligence community that Moscow carried out an operation to help his candidacy and hurt Hillary Clinton.

The Republican-run Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday repudiated President Donald Trump’s denials that Russia interfered to help his 2016 campaign. But the release of the report—at around 3pm, just before the July 4 holiday—suggests that the Senate Republicans are eager to keep their differences with Trump out of the sunlight.